Jose Mourinho: Chelsea fans will never forgive me

Jose Mourinho insists Chelsea fans will ‘never forgive me’ after his Inter Milan side knocked Chelsea and his former players out of the Champions League.

Samuel Eto’o scored the second-half goal which clinched a 1-0 victory at Stamford Bridge and handed the Italians an emphatic 3-1 triumph on aggregate. To complete Chelsea’s misery, striker Didier Drogba was sent off for kicking out at Inter defender Thiago Motta as tempers frayed in a tense second half.

Jose Mourinho

Mourinho, who spent three and a half years and won back-to-back Premier League titles at Stamford Bridge before being axed by owner Roman Abramovich , said: “I’m very happy. Very, very happy because we won and because we were the best team.”

He added: “Sometimes in football you win because you’re lucky. Sometimes you win because you are the best team. Sometimes you win because you were the best team from the first to the last minute. That team was my team and my players.

“I’m not very happy because they (Chelsea) lost. I’m very happy because my players are happy, my supporters are happy, my president is happy and because I worked so much for this game.

“As a professional, that’s the best feeling you can have. I’m not happy because my ex-players or Roman (Abramovich) lost, or that Chelsea supporters go home sad. I’m not happy about their unhappiness.”

Mourinho claimed his team had put doubt into the minds of the Chelsea players by playing three strikers in Eto’o, Diego Milito and Goran Pandev with Dutch playmaker Wesley Sneijder in the hole just behind them.

Mourinho said: “I planned. I believed (Branislav) Ivanovic and (Yuri) Zhirkov didn’t play well either in attack or defence and that created some doubts in them.

“They felt even in the first half that it wasn’t their match. We didn’t play a defensive game, we controlled the match and we deserved to win.

“I’m not saying Inter are better than them. I’m saying that, Inter were much better than Chelsea and that brought frustration to the Chelsea players.”